by Sierra Dean
When we turned onto West 52nd, Holden thrust a white paper bag into my hand. Once our search was exhausted and we’d set out on our way home, I’d made us stop at Magnolia so I could pick up cupcakes for Grandmere before it was too late to FedEx them to her. I’d forgotten I gave it to him.
“This wasn’t quite what I had in mind when you said you wanted to go hunting. Stalking the elusive cupcake isn’t a typical sentry job.”
We stopped walking at a red light, and I looked at the bag with its charming blue logo. “I know.” I fidgeted with the zipper on my jacket, pulling it up and down until Holden reached out and grabbed my hand to stop me. His hands were colder than usual, having absorbed the outside chill.
Vampires were weird like that. They weren’t always cold, but they had an amphibious habit of adapting to the temperature around them. With the air temperature hovering at twenty, my breath swam around my head like thick cigarette smoke, and Holden’s skin was freezing.
He moved a step closer, no breath clouds escaping his lips until he spoke.
“Secret…”
I countered by stepping out of his reach.
Since summer I was having trouble coming to terms with Holden’s attachment to me. I wanted to believe he maintained close contact because he was grateful for all I’d done to save him, but there was more to it. The long sideways glances, the lingering touches, the comments laden with innuendo…they all spelled trouble.
Worse still, even months after the fact, I still couldn’t stop thinking about a dream we’d shared in which things had gone way beyond hot and heavy. Sure, a sex dream wasn’t the same as actual sex, but in this case it was more than a dream. We’d shared the visceral experience while both wide awake, and we’d kissed more than once in real life.
And what a kisser he was.
I returned to toying with my zipper and bouncing nervously on my heels. Holden stayed a half step behind me, and he raked one hand through his dark brown hair, then jammed both his hands into his pockets.
I opened my mouth to say something, but a scream brought me back down to earth. Holden put his hand on my elbow and pulled me against him.
Another scream rattled through the night, and this time I could pinpoint its origin. A few blocks down, beyond the line of apartments where I lived, was a public high school. Usually this late at night it was dark and closed, but there were more cars than usual parked in front, some using up space in front of my building, and all the lights were on. The elevated sounds of panic became a chorus of shouts, and the one female shriek continued to rise over the others.
“What the hell?” I moved to cross the street, but Holden held me firm. A speeding cab blitzed past, honking at my near misstep.
“Be careful.”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Thanks.”
“You’re no good to the Tribunal if you’re dead, and I don’t know how I’d explain to Sig that you were being replaced by a Yellow Cab operator.” He held out a hand to the now-green light inviting us to cross the street.
Holden stayed about ten feet behind me as we made our way to the gated area in front of the school. We weaved through the throngs of people bunched together until we were standing in the middle of the group. There were at least a hundred teenagers decked out in their formal best. Boys in borrowed suits and girls in brand-new dresses who shivered against the chill of winter with their bare arms and open-toed shoes.
The smell of blood was so strong I was choking on it. When Holden came to stand next to me, his tightly drawn features told me he could smell it as well, if not better.
“Is it…?”
“It’s human.” He confirmed what I already knew.
“I was worried you’d say that.”
The screaming continued with the unabated consistency of an annoying car alarm. It had been carrying on so long now I almost didn’t notice it. The woman responsible for the worst of the noise was a bland-looking thirty-something sitting on the front steps of the school with her mouth hanging agape, emitting a high-pitched wail.
Sidling up beside her, I lowered to a crouch and took her hand in mine. For a long while she didn’t seem to recognize I was there, until the screaming petered out into hoarse, gulping gasps, and she turned her glassy, red-rimmed eyes towards me.
“I never…” Her lower lip began to tremble and mascara streaks smeared the underside of her eyes, making her face look like a hollow, ghostly void. Her hand squeezed mine, and the strength of the gesture was shocking.
“What happened?” I asked.
Behind us, a group of teenagers were crowded around the fence, speaking in excited tones. Several girls in their midst were crying, and dozens were on their cell phones. The woman holding my hand was grasping me like I was the last safe port in a storm, blubbering incoherently. Her eyelashes were frosty where her tears had frozen from the cold.
“Holden, can you go see what’s going on?” I didn’t look back at him but felt the presence of his body disappear. Still looking at the woman, I asked, “What did you see?”
“Death,” she whispered, and it was the first thing she’d said so far I really understood. She stared at me, her eyes haunted by something she would never be able to unsee, and I battled with myself over whether or not it was something I needed to add to the nest of awful things that lived inside my own mind.
“Secret.” Holden’s voice came from the middle of the wide circle of teens and was heavy with something serious and frightening. “I think you’d better come here.”
I let go of the woman’s hand, and she didn’t protest. Her body rested limp and useless on the steps, and she stared at nothing, tears streaming down her face. This was what my world did to people. This was what happened when there was no plan.
Meeting Holden where he stood amid the crowd of brave gawkers, I slipped in front of him to get a good look at what all the fuss was about. I was fairly certain I didn’t want to know, but blissful ignorance wasn’t an option in my line of work.
On the ground next to the brick wall of the building that neighbored the high school was a human body. Or what was left of it.
It had once been a girl, judging by the sky-blue taffeta party dress spread out on the concrete. The dress and the trunk of the body were all that remained. The girl’s limbs and everything above her neck was missing.
While the one teacher on the steps was too upset to act, several other teachers and adult chaperones were trying to move the teens back inside. A balding man in a cheap suit was crouched low to the ground where a group of girls were huddled together crying. One of the girls kept saying, “I don’t understand, she just went to use the bathroom. She was only gone for a few minutes.”
I turned back to the body after she said it for the third time.
There was so much blood on the concrete it made the dress look like an island of blue floating amid a sea of blackened red. The reek of death was bold enough the crowd must be able to smell it. Whatever had done this, it had acted fast. Too fast to be anything human. One minute the girl had been inside at her winter formal, and now she was out here missing everything that could identify her except her blue dress. Anything that could tear a girl apart—without being seen—before her friends realized she was gone had to be a monster.
Reaching behind me, I grabbed for Holden’s hand without looking to see if he would take it. Cold fingers wove through mine, and for once I thought our temperatures might be the exact same. He gave me a reassuring squeeze, and it helped to know he was there, keeping me grounded to the world of the somewhat-living.
The song of sirens filled the night, coming closer.
“I need to call Mercedes,” I whispered, but the words got caught in a cold gust of air and were carried off unheard into the dark.
Chapter Seven
Holden and I were sitting side by side in an interrogation room, staring at the mirror facing us. I was grateful, not for the first time in my life, that vampires could cast a reflection. Otherwise we’d have some serious e
xplaining to do.
I wasn’t too concerned about our situation. If we’d been in any real trouble, they wouldn’t have kept us together.
Holden had gone stone-still but was sitting close enough to me I could feel the rise and fall of his forced breaths. For my part, I was trying not to fidget. I wasn’t the biggest fan of small spaces.
The door next to the mirror opened, and Detective Nowakowski came in carrying a folder and a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee. I waited for Mercedes to follow him, but he closed the door and took the seat across the table from us.
Tyler gave Holden a cold glare, and my vampire escort returned the favor by lifting the corners of his mouth in a telling smirk and putting his hand on my knee.
If the contact wasn’t so helpful in soothing my ragged nerves, I might have slapped him. As it was I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms defensively over my chest.
“Any word on who she was?” I asked, attempting to steer things towards a professional point of discussion.
“Her name was Ashley Parsons. She was sixteen and had just been crowned queen of the winter formal, so I’m told.” Tyler leaned back in the metal folding chair, its old frame creaking with the shift in weight. “Tell me something, Secret.”
There was a pause, so I filled it. “Something specific, or just anything that comes to mind?”
Tyler’s grip tightened on the pen in his hand, and he clenched his jaw.
“Tell me how it is that the same night we tell you about this case, you just happen to stumble across a fresh body on your block?”
“Good old-fashioned dumb luck, I guess.”
He clicked the end of his pen and wrote something in the folder he had with him. I doubted it was anything important. I also doubted it was my name with little hearts floating around it.
“Tyler,” I said, my tone serious. “We didn’t find the body. About a hundred high-school students and their teacher did.”
“I’m aware of that.”
Holden was busy doing his impression of a gorgeous chair, his hand still on my knee, but he hadn’t spoken yet. Given his history with Tyler, I was thoroughly impressed with how well-behaved he was being.
“Can I ask you something?”
He looked surprised but nodded.
“Why are we here?”
“Standard procedure.”
“No offense, Detective, but bullshit. The on-scene officer took our statements. We didn’t need to be here.” Being snippy wasn’t always the best idea when it came to the police, but at least I wasn’t so jumpy anymore.
Tyler set his pen down, then took a long sip from his coffee. Whoever had brewed it made a strong pot because the smell of burnt roast filled my nostrils. Every time I swallowed I wanted to ask for extra sugar.
I leaned back in my own chair and waited. If we were going to have a staring contest, I wanted to be comfortable.
He placed his coffee on the table and began to speak, but I couldn’t hear a word he said. At my side, Holden went tense, and it wasn’t long before I understood why. The aroma of coffee vanished, replaced by something darker and unmistakable.
Blood.
It was the only scent that could overwhelm all else and drown out my other senses. My breath quivered, and I looked over to Holden. He was no longer pretending to breathe, and his expression was drawn and rigid with control. On my knee, his fingers were squeezing too hard. He was trying to fight back his fangs.
A hollow plop noise brought my attention back to Tyler, who was still speaking. The words came to an abrupt end when he caught my horrified expression and both of our gazes fixed on his coffee cup. Something thick and liquid fell into the cup, causing the black coffee to ripple.
Then came the sound of raindrops.
Only it wasn’t raining.
The table in front of us, once boring and beige, became dappled with spots of red. At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, until a drop of blood landed on Tyler’s white dress shirt, and then another. One hit his eyebrow and dripped into his eyelashes, causing him to blink spasmodically.
All three of us looked up to the ceiling at the same time.
The ceiling tiles were stained a red so dark it looked black, but only in a small area right above Tyler.
His whole shirt was splattered with blood. We stood from our chairs and stepped back in time to see the tiles sag and the ceiling burst like a festering wound. The table was littered with pieces of broken tile, but among those was the source of the blood.
A Christmas stocking, now empty, with a collection of body parts scattered around it. And among them was the worst thing I had ever seen in all my years of hunting vampires and killing pseudo-demonic monsters.
The red-headed curls and freckled skin looked especially gruesome given the waxy gray pallor of her complexion, but I knew right away who it was. The image of her decapitated head, still wearing a rhinestone tiara, would haunt me all my life.
When Holden and I emerged in the lobby, Desmond and Nolan were waiting for us. One look at my blood-spattered tank top and they both rose to their feet with apprehensive expressions clouding their faces. No one but me looked at Holden, but if my countenance was half as grim as his, I could appreciate why my boys were so worried.
Having given my second police statement of the day, I was more than ready to be home. And if the weariness in my bones was any indication, sunlight wasn’t far off. I needed to be in bed and away from the sun before it rose.
I was ready for this night to be over.
“Are you okay?” Desmond asked, obviously trying not to sound too anxious.
“It’s not mine.” I gestured to the bloodstains on my face and clothes.
He pulled me away from Holden and wrapped me in a protective embrace. Normally I might have resisted such a public display of affection, but as it was I was happy to be close to someone. I tucked my head against his chest and breathed in the comforting limey flavor of him. The coiled pressure inside of me unwound, and I relaxed almost instantly.
Desmond stroked my hair and held me closer. Holden hung back, and Nolan danced uneasily from foot to foot.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked, only now realizing I hadn’t called either of them.
“You weren’t at home, so I called the office,” Desmond explained. “Nolan explained what you had him looking for, and when you didn’t answer your cell, I called Mercedes to find out if she knew where you were.”
Now I was going to have to explain to Cedes why I had multiple men claiming to be my boyfriend. That was going to go over swimmingly. For all the times she had demanded I find Mr. Right, I don’t think she expected me to find two at the same time.
Yet somehow it really didn’t seem to matter right now.
“She said you were here,” Nolan finished. “So we came to find out why they were keeping you.”
Desmond lifted my chin with one finger and stared at me.
“What happened?” His gaze darted down, looking at the blood. He was definitely misreading the situation, so I had to wonder what Mercedes had told him. I could tell from the look in his eyes he was convinced I was in trouble for something.
I wasn’t sure he was wrong.
“I didn’t come in like this.”
He ran a finger over the blood, and it came off still wet. His brows shot up with surprise.
“What happened?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.” Tyler emerged from the back room. He had changed into a clean shirt, but his face was still red from the clinging streaks of blood he hadn’t been able to clean off.
The detective looked at me surrounded by a collection of good-looking men, and the expression on his face made me push Desmond away so I was standing alone. I glared at Tyler defiantly, not in a mood to be judged right then.
“Detective Nowakowski.” Holden spoke for the first time. “I believe we’ve said all we have to say on this subject to your officers. Miss McQueen and I have been through our fair share of traumatic in
stances tonight, and I don’t think your suspicions of us have any foundation. If you know something, feel free to book us for it. But as we are guilty of nothing other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, we’d appreciate it if we could leave now.”
Mercedes had come in about halfway through Holden’s speech and moved to stand between Tyler and us. Tyler’s face had gone red, and I wish I knew why he was so hell-bent on proving me guilty of something. His suspicions went beyond lingering ego bruises. There was a darker element lurking under the surface, and judging by his flushed features and red-hot aura of anger, it was threatening to boil over.
“Of course you’re all free to leave,” Mercedes said before Tyler had a chance to speak. She shot him a look that said more than words could, and he remained silent.
Tyler went back up the stairs into the main workroom, and I nodded my thanks to Mercedes.
“Secret,” she said, stopping me. She came closer and whispered so the receptionist couldn’t hear. “I don’t know what happened in there, and I know you’re not responsible, but this isn’t human and it’s not normal. I need you on this. We can’t stop something that can place a body in the ceiling of a police station and vanish.”
“I know.”
“This is up to you now.”
Chapter Eight
Five days later I lay awake as dusk settled over the city, staring up at my ceiling and waiting for the world to cave in on me. The cracked plaster was as changeless as ever, but I was too on edge to look away. I kept expecting blood to start leaking from the cracks and little bits of body to come tumbling out.
In five days I’d scoured the city top to bottom, and all I’d gotten was more rumors and no real answers. I was out of places to look, out of ideas and out of time. Another body had turned up yesterday, this time in the lobby of Trump Tower, and now the city was in an absolute panic.
